Imaginary Worlds - In Defense of Captain Hook

Episode Date: December 4, 2014

Peter Pan is never supposed to grow up, but Illinois State University professor Karen Coats says the character has grown over time from a Victorian symbol of immaturity to a celebration of the inner-child. Either way, Captain Hook got a raw deal. He told me so himself over the phone. Featuring voice actor Erik Bergmann as a drunk-dialing Captain Hook, and actress Lily Dorment reading from the J.M. Barrie book.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I'm Eric Molenski. All children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they will grow up, and the way Wendy knew was this. One day when she was two years old, she was playing in a garden, and she plucked another flower and ran with it to her mother. I suppose she must have looked rather delightful, for Mrs. Darling put her hand to her heart and cried, Oh, why can't you remain like this forever? This was all that passed between them on the subject, but henceforth Wendy knew that she must grow up.

You always know after you are two. Two is the beginning of the end. So I want to read you part of an obituary which ran the New York Times on February 27th, 1996. Dan Kiley, the psychiatrist whose 1983 book, The Peter Pan Syndrome, which became an international bestseller, died on Saturday in Tucson, Arizona. He was 54. According to the Times, he got the idea for the book, quote, after noticing, like the famous character in the J.M. Barrie play, many of the troubled teenage boys he treated had problems growing up and accepting adult responsibilities. For the record, Kiley actually was not the first person to notice this phenomenon, but it didn't really matter because according to the Times, when it came to the Peter Pan syndrome, he was patient zero.

Dr. Kiley freely admitted that he had been a Peter Pan, but even after his success, happiness continued to elude him, at least until he underwent what his agent called an emotional sea change. After his second divorce, Dr. Kiley moved from Chicago to Tucson and became deeply involved in meditation and Zen philosophy. That may have accounted for his newfound peace of mind, but his wife had a different explanation. Quote, he stopped chasing young babes, she said, suggesting that her husband had found true happiness

only after he met and married her three years ago, settling down into a blissful relationship with her and their dog, Shelly. So this is a very different lesson than you would get if you had watched the Steven Spielberg film Hook. In that movie, Peter Pan makes the mistake of kissing Wendy's granddaughter and instantly starts to grow up and eventually becomes an adult, which is the worst thing that could ever happen to him. A children's hospital is dedicating an entire wing to Granny Wendy. Brad.

Peter, you're missing it. All right. Want a meeting tomorrow, A.M.? Dad, my game. You promised. Listen, it's my son's big game. Last game of the season, Santa series. I gotta be there, I promised.

So, we'll make it a short meeting. I'll be there. My word is my bond. Okay. Never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, ever want to grow up. As a Gen Xer who grew up on Steven Spielberg movies, I got the message pretty loud and clear that I was supposed to hold on to my childhood as tightly as I could because being an adult would be soul-sucking. But as a kid, I never really liked Peter Pan.

Although now, as an adult, I love the story. We're always in this kind of push-me-pull-you relationship with children and childhood, which makes sense to me then that you wouldn't have been that interested in it as a child, but you're much more interested in it as an adult. Karen Coates is a professor of literature at Illinois State University, and she wrote this really interesting paper called Child Hating, Peter Pan in the Context of Victorian Hatred.

She says to understand Peter Pan, we have to remember he was invented in a society where children were supposed to be seen, not heard. And he embodies some of the worst qualities of children that we kind of want to forget. The children that we invest so much love in and so much time and attention are often very cavalier with our feelings. They don't mean to be. There's sort of this recognition that we're all at base, very, very narcissistic.

But then you have Peter Pan, who is reared apart from human society, and just, he's murderous, he's selfish. He doesn't play by the rules that keep the rest of us in check. And I think part of what's so infuriating about him is that he keeps forgetting that it's what you know, that he keeps forgetting things he did wrong. Even people he's loved and lost, he forgets about them about him. And it's sort of enviable and infuriating at the same time. Exactly. Because wouldn't we love to be relieved of the responsibility of remembering the hurts that we that we have perpetrated on others? I mean, well, he never really talks about the fact that somebody hurts him. And that may be his biggest denial. Limbing his experience is this tragic loss that his mother didn't love him enough to come seek him.

Long ago, he said, I thought, like you, that my mother would always keep the window open for me. So I stayed away for moons and moons and moons, and then flew back. But the window was barred, for my mother had forgotten all about me, and there was another little boy sleeping in my bed. I'm not sure that this was true, but Peter thought it was true, and it scared them. Are you sure mothers are like that? Yes. So, this was the truth about mothers, the toads.

Still, it's best to be careful, and no one knows so quickly as a child when he should give in wendy let us go home cried john and michael together yes she said clutching them not tonight asked the lost boys bewildered they knew in what they called their hearts that one can get on quite well without a mother and that it is only the mothers who think you can't. At once Wendy replied resolutely for the horrible thought had come to her. Perhaps mother is in half mourning by this time. This dread made her forgetful of what must be Peter's feelings, and she said to him rather sharply, Peter, will you make the necessary arrangements? If you wish it, he replied

as coolly as if she had asked him to pass the nuts. Not so much as a sorry to lose you between them. If she did not mind the parting, he was going to show her, was Peter, that neither did he. But of course, he cared very much, and he was so full of wrath against grown-ups, who, as usual, were spoiling everything, that as soon as he got inside his tree, he breathed intentionally quick short breaths at the rate of about five a second. He did this because there is a saying in the Neverland that every time you breathe, a grown-up dies.

And Peter was killing them off vindictively as fast as possible. Peter Pan had always been popular with kids, but the Peter Pan that we think of, that we know, is really the one from the 1950s. Because the Broadway musical and the Disney cartoon came out within a year of each other. And suddenly Peter Pan was everywhere. And he was kind of an American hero now.

In the 1950s, when Jungian psychologists picked up the Peter Pan syndrome, the first or the major statement of that was a book called The Problem of the Pure Eternus. And it was these men who won't grow up. The syndrome included things like an attachment to extreme sports, an inability to commit to a relationship, the inability to commit to a long-term job. When the book got reprinted later, I think in the 70s, the title changed and it was just the pure eternus rather than the problem of a pure eternus. Instead of being perceived as a problem anymore it's actually a privileged

subject position now to be that person who doesn't grow up because if you think about it the the technologies that we have require us to have to be in some ways perpetually adolescent we have to keep experimenting and keep trying new things. And you can't have the same cell phone and you have to keep on, you can't commit to a long-term job. You have to be willing to be flexible and maybe change careers at 50 or something like that. So all of the things that were presented as problematic in the early days of this Peter Pan syndrome are now ways that actually make you more functional in today's world than dysfunctional. I have to say, as an adult, it's weird how much I feel bad for Captain Hook. I mean, how much would it suck to find a fountain of youth, you know, in your prime of adulthood, in your 30s, but be surrounded by feral kids forever.

This is why Captain Hook hates Peter, because Peter enjoys himself. Captain Hook has accepted the terms of his society, which all aim toward constraining your enjoyment. He's entrapped in his adult persona in ways that Peter is youth and joy. And why wouldn't you hate that? What sort of form was Hook himself showing? Misguided man though he was, we may be glad, without sympathising with him, that in the end he was true to the traditions of his race. The other boys were flying around him now, flouting, scornful. And he staggered about the deck, striking up at them impotently. His mind was no longer with them. It was slouching in the playing fields of long ago, or being sent up to the headmaster for good,

or watching the wall game from a famous wall. And his shoes were right, and his waistcoat was right, and his tie was right, and his socks were right. James Hook, thou not wholly unheroic figure. Farewell. I, you know, in the booth recording. And about an hour ago, I got this really weird text message. It said, urgent. I understand you're looking for an expert on Peter Pan. Call me. There's no name, nothing. I didn't recognize the number. So normally I'd, you know, text back. Thanks. I'm all set. But I don't know. The text message was kind of intriguing and weird.

So I gave this person a call, and I recorded it. And I'm just going to play it. Hello? Hello? Hello, can you hear me? Is this Eric J. Molenski? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's me. That's who I thought it was. Okay, who are you?

Okay, look, so I can see, by the way, this is a 323 area code, so you're obviously not calling from Neverland. area code, so you're obviously not calling from Neverland. No, I live in Los Angeles, California. All right, so are you an actor? I am not an actor. I work at an animation studio. Oh, so you work at Disney.

We are not affiliated with that studio, nor any affiliates of that studio. Okay, but are you working on a show or a movie about Peter Pan? I work with Peter Pan. You work with Peter Pan? I was driving to work on the 101 freeway yesterday and I had a little runt flew over my car and started

knocking on the window making faces at me like a goon. I tried to swipe him, and I got into a fender bender. So you are Captain Hook, the pirate Captain Hook, and you're living in Los Angeles? What's the problem? Piracy is a dying business. My kind of piracy.

The game is digital now. Huh. I'm trying. What? Go, what? No, that's interesting. I mean, I hadn't thought about that, but that makes perfect sense. I'm trying to learn.

Smee showed me something called a bite torrent, but I shall never be a digital pirate. Oh, so Smee is there, too? We move here together. Are you two... I mean, I just kind of always... I don't know. Obviously, I'm not interested in women.

As it is, we have a lovely home in the West Hollywood, and we adopted a shelter dog, a pit bull we named Tick. You still haven't explained this to me. Why are you working in an animation

studio? I was merely following Peter. So Peter came to Los Angeles first. The last boys that he was bringing back to Neverland, they're getting a little long in the tooth. One of them had gray hair and a goatee. It sounds like people I would know. I'm sorry? I said it sounds like people I would know. Oh, well, lucky you. Anyway, they told him how wonderful their lives were in the land of Burbank.

They followed him. He filled their whole staff with lost boys. It was a perfect fit. They'd sleep in their cubicles and racing car beds. Toys I don't recognize. I had to keep an eye on fans, so I applied to run this organization. They were ecstatic to have an adult in charge for once.

Wait, I'm... Hold on, so you needed to keep an eye on him, but I mean, if he's left Neverland, isn't that great? You have the whole place to yourself. No, no, no, no, no. I need to make sure he stays here. You see, a plan is a thought. You know what?

I'm sorry. I don't mean to be rude, but it sounds like you've been... Have you been drinking? Yeah. Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum. Yeah, I guess that was a dumb question. All right, well, here's another really dumb question.

So you work in an animation studio. I assume you have to do some kind of drawing. I mean, how do you draw with a hook? I switched my hook with a stylus pen. And that's a bit of technology I can muster. Peter, I had a duel the other day to see who could draw the most storyboards in under five minutes. Guess who won?

I won. He threw a temper tantrum and kicked poor Tinkerbell. Wait, wait, wait. So Tinkerbell is at this animation studio too? Well, he calls her Tinkerbell, but she's not the one he remembers. They don't live long, you know. She works in the coloring department,

ink and paint. The young women here are emaciated. Yeah. They turn sideways and they disappear. Yeah. No, I lived in LA for a while. I know what you mean. It's important to take care of yourself, isn't it?

I think it is. I've been alive for 160 years. You think I got that without take care of yourself, isn't it? I think it is. I've been alive for 160 years. You think I got that without taking care of myself? Yesterday, though, that little elf shot a taser in my barbell. That taser he stole from the police. Do you know he taunts the helicopters? He plays chases with them and leads them to my home. In the middle of the night, we were awoken from a sound sleep by the sound of rumbling and a bright searchlight.

And do you know whom I found in our swimming pool? That blasted crocodile. There's only one way he could have gotten here. So I see what you're doing. What is Smee doing in Los Angeles? He's a graphic designer. He designs t-shirts. You know, the kind with the funny sayings on them and the graphics.

He spends most of his time in his studio. I don't mind telling you it's a little bit lonely. What's lonely? Oh, he's lonely? I don't know if he's lonely. I never see him. I'm lonely. I don lonely? Oh, he's lonely? I don't know if he's lonely. I never see him. I'm lonely. I don't see him anymore.

I move everything for this dream of mine and he just disappears on me. Wait, wait, I'm sorry. You said his dream? What? My dream. I... What's your dream? What do you mean? Alright, alright, alright. And even if Peter hears this, it doesn't matter. He has a memory of a goldfish. I... What's your dream? What do you mean? All right, all right, all right. And even if Peter hears this, it doesn't matter.

He has a memory of a goldfish. Did you know that we start aging every time we leave Neverland? No, I never read that. I discovered this when I kept going back and forth on the high seas. I suddenly noticed a gray hair. What's this? It gave me the idea to lead him astray. Pan, I led him to the Darling's Home in London.

Oh, no way. Oh, you think he was smart enough to find himself to that particular metropolitan center? And they keep showing him back, too. Like I said, just the memory of a nap. After 120 years, the good news is, Dan has finally hit puberty. His voice sounds ridiculous. He's confused and horny

and has a lot of attitude. Wait, wait, wait, wait. So you keep leading him astray and he keeps aging. That means you're aging too. I mean, theoretically you could die before him. Yeah, but I'm slowly killing the spirit. After all these years of humiliation,

it finally paid off. Listen to this. Yesterday, Peter asked me for a cigarette, and then he told me I was cool. Wow, so you gave up eternal life to follow your dream. What did I give up? Sixty years ago, I received word that Wendy Darling had died. Really?

Well, of course. She chose to grow up. She didn't give in to Pan's nonsense. And I felt strangely envious of her. I envied her. Hmm. The only thing that kept us in Neverland was fear. Fear of growing old.

Fear of dying. Fear of... Fear. Yeah. It takes courage to face life head-on. Now, Peter may torment me for a while longer,

but at least I'm not a coward anymore. This is weird, but I guess congratulations is in order? Thank you very much. I'm having a little celebratory drink. Yeah, I guess congratulations is in order. Thank you very much. I'm having a little celebratory drink. Yeah, I guess, apparently. I'm sorry, I happen to have Facebook open here.

Did you just friend me on Facebook? I didn't, sir. Will you accept, I hope? You know, actually, I think I have to go. But thank you so much for calling. It's been really great talking with you. It's been my pleasure. Stay in touch.

Okay. Well, thank you very much. All right, now you hang up first. After three. Okay. You hang up first. Okay. One, two, three.

Okay. Did you hang up? That is it for this week's show. Thanks for listening. Special thanks to Karen Coates, Lily Dormant, who did the reading, and actor Eric Bergman, who played Captain Hook. And in case you're

wondering, that was about half scripted and half improvised. He was not drunk. Although, I probably had a little too much caffeine that morning. You can like the show on Facebook or leave a comment in iTunes. I tweet at emalinski. The show's website is

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